


Conquer Yourself

by Kittyknowsthings



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - All Media Types, Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Crowley is Good With Kids (Good Omens), GFY, Gen, Gratuitous Bracket Overuse, Kid Fic, M/M, Studio Ghibli References, parenting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-17
Updated: 2020-03-17
Packaged: 2021-03-01 03:09:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,116
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23188288
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kittyknowsthings/pseuds/Kittyknowsthings
Summary: In which Family Film Night is established and Clem, to the terror of his parents, learns a new skill
Relationships: Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Comments: 44
Kudos: 136
Collections: The Snake Pit, Wiggleverse





	Conquer Yourself

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Getting a Wiggle On](https://archiveofourown.org/works/20467451) by [Kedreeva](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kedreeva/pseuds/Kedreeva). 
  * Inspired by [Snake Children, or Snildren,](https://archiveofourown.org/works/20872916) by [Quilly](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Quilly/pseuds/Quilly). 
  * Inspired by [In Which Angelica and Clem Meet a Local](https://archiveofourown.org/works/21176150) by [OlwenDylluan](https://archiveofourown.org/users/OlwenDylluan/pseuds/OlwenDylluan). 



> Written for the Great Good Omens Snake-Off.

It had started when Angelica had brought home a borrowed DVD.

Ever since her trip to the Museum, she had rather enjoyed learning about art, so when one of her classmates doodled in a style she was entirely unfamiliar with, she'd of course asked about it.

In the ensuing conversation the girl had declared Angelica and her family could not go any longer without watching a film called "Spirited Away" and brought it the very next day.

"Can we watch it, Azirafather?" Angelica asked. 

Aziraphale looked at the picture on the casing, which held images that looked charming enough, despite the somewhat spooky description, and suggested parental guidance but implied it was suited to rather young children otherwise. 

(Trying to figure out their approximate human age for the birth certificates had been quite headache-inducing, between their apparent age and their skills and knowledge which vastly differed, and they soon decided trying to apply human maturity standards to their children was an exercise in futility and best avoided.) 

"I suppose. But we'll have to wait until your Father gets home, I wouldn't know where to begin with this, and we wouldn't want to damage a possession of one of your class mates."

When Crowley returned, he was rather charmed when Aziraphale, of all people, suggested a "family film night", quickly concurred on Aziraphale's assessment that the children should be able to handle the contents, and with a snap of his fingers set up the necessary equipment.

All of them (including Clem, on Crowley's gentle suggestion over the difference of color and depth perception in snake and humanoid form respectively) went people-shaped for it, so Aziraphale and the children followed Crowley's explanation with six surprisingly similar head-tilted looks of curiousity as he showed them the shiny disk and explained it was the concept of a vinyl record scaled down to grooves so small they had to be carved onto the disk with a beam of light. 

They all snuggled up together on the same couch in defiance of the laws of physics - "in case Angel Dad needs hugs for the scary parts" to watch the movie - and some parts were in fact quite scary, though proved easily weathered with hugs. 

Even Aziraphale, most skeptical about the concept of movies, was drawn into the adventure quickly enough, though he had to be shushed repeatedly when he recognized references to the greater Japanese mythology. 

The children were especially delighted to find a boy who could shift into a very serpentine dragon form an important character of the movie, and even Crowley, at the end, sniffed suspiciously and murmured something about those parents not deserving that little girl.

All in all, the household's first family film night was declared a success worth repeating.

Later that evening Clem, back in his favored form and curled up, found himself pensive, considering Haku's flying. 

Haku's dragon form had legs, yes, but they didn't seem particularly _essential_ to the process.

While Clem could get around easily enough in this form, and his siblings and parents always accommodated him if they were somewhere his snake shape was a disadvantage, he did like the idea of being a bit more independent - especially outside. 

Zipping around as his siblings ran, maybe at the height of their heads so he could join them without risking being accidentally trampled?  
Now that sounded like a skill worth cultivating. 

James' voice echoed in his head, as he described riding a bike.

“It’s a bit like flying, when you get to a good clip. What I imagine flying to be like, I mean.”

And it had been nice, the way the not-quite-wind had rushed around his face when he rode in the basket of Angelica's bike.

(He had tried sticking his head out of the Bentley, once, the way Datura liked to, but that had been far too whippy and noisy for him to truly enjoy.) 

Clem, determined, slid onto the bed, far enough back to have a bit of a run-up, or rather slither-up.

He closed his eyes (Snakes do not usually come equipped with eyelids, but Azirafather hadn't known that. Especially Clem, prone to overload, was glad to have the option), focused on the sensation of airflow against the scales on his snout as he'd felt it in the basket, and shot off the bed with a leap of faith. 

When he opened his eyes again, his mouth fell open in delight - he was flying! Really flying! 

The opposite wall was coming closer, so Clem tried to divert his course mostly by turning his snout - it felt a lot like swimming through air, really. 

He gave out a startled hiss when he realized he'd oversteered, nearly making a full u-turn. While his swimming instincts were helpful, air was turning out far less resistant to water. (It had fortunately not occurred to him there would be any need compensate for gravity, so he didn't have to.)

Clem got the hang of it quickly as he flew around his room, and for a while he enjoyed swooping through the air. 

Then, however, it occurred to him that while Haku's legs hadn't been needed for flying, they had seemed _very_ useful when landing.

He'd hoped to have figured this all out before he showed off his new skill, but he figured it was smarter to get assistance before he tired himself out. Surely his flying was very impressive already. 

All the doors in the cottage were mostly kept open, because doorknobs are not easy to work for snakes, so making his way to the sitting room where his parents were was easy enough - he quite enjoyed being able to skip the stairs entirely, this way, too, he hadn't even considered that aspect of his flying, and felt even more satisfied. 

"Father, Azirafather, Look!" he greeted his parents, who first looked on the floor, puzzled. 

He broadcasted a great deal of mirth as they finally spotted him flying through the air.

"Clem!" Azirafather exclaimed, opened his mouth and then closed it again, as if he couldn't quite figure out what to follow it up with. 

"I can fly!" Clem declared. 

"I can see that," Azirafather said weakly.

Father was only staring open-mouthed, following his progress about the room with his head with little regard for the usual range of motion of a humanoid spine, which Clem took as admiration - to be far, his motions were quite graceful, a middle ground of a standard snakey swim and the rapid curling of Haku in the movie, and therefore would be perfectly worthy of that admiration. The demon was a bit too occupied with terror to appreciate the aesthetics. 

"I can't figure out how to land, though," Clem explained, fortunately missing the way his Father's terror clicked up several more notches at the words. "Do you have any ideas?" 

At that, Azirafather leaped into action, jumping up from the sofa. 

"You can steer, I take it?", he asked.

Azirafather inched sideways and backward, still watching Clem, and stopped once his back was rather close to a wall.

"Yup," Clem confirmed unconcerned and curled some more through the air. 

"First fly to the far end of the room, then, and then fly towards me, slowing down as far as you think you can safely can, and I'll catch you."

"Alright!" Clem agreed cheerfully, and did just that, finding himself safely cradled in Azirafather's hands.

"Thanks, Azirafather," he said, because he figured it was polite. 

He was then quite startled to feel a sudden drop. 

"Azirafather?" 

The Angel had sat down on the floor, right where he was. 

It took Clem a while to place the expression on his face - it was rather similar to the one when they had first shifted into people.

"Oh, I startled you!"

"That you did, my dear," Aziraphale said and looked up at Crowley, who was still staring at them from the vantage point on the sofa, and then back at his son, entirely calm and trusting in his hands, which rather wanted to tremble. 

Crowley finally jumped up himself, kneeling on the ground in front of them, ran his fingers over Clem's scales. 

"No more flying until we figure out how to deal with it, then?" Clem concluded. 

"Exactly," Aziraphale confirmed, much as he wanted to ask Clem to never ever fly again. 

"And no teaching the others, either, spawn" Crowley added sternly, which opened an entirely new avenue of terror. 

(Crowley was having a nauseating vision of Datura, resident fellow speed demon, colliding with a wall snout-first at a more Bentley-like speed, the momentum crushing them together with a concertina-like sound - or worse, the noise of crunching bones.)

"I'll keep it a secret for now," Clem promised cheerfully. "Do you want to stay on the floor?" He then asked, no judgement in his voice. 

"Not particularly, no," Aziraphale responded, cradling Clem against his chest with one hand and reaching the other out to Crowley, who pulled him back to his feet and hugged them both before leading them back to the couch. 

"However did you learn how to fly?" 

"Well, Haku could do it. And it seemed like it might be a useful skill, since I don't like legs so much. I thought about it for a while, and then I just tried it, and it worked."

After a few more clarifying questions and checks of Clem's health and safety, the little snake wriggled, and Aziraphale forced himself to let him leave his embrace. 

The little snake yawned and curled up on the back of the couch.

"I need a nap," he declared and fell asleep quickly enough, entirely unaware of his fathers retreating to the kitchen to have tea and take turns having a proper panic attack.

"It seems," Aziraphale finally declared with his hands wrapped around his third mug of tea, "that we should add a discussion about any new ideas the movies have given them to our film nights. And maybe about ideas they bring home from school. And a few firm and clear rules on sharing those ideas with us and not trying to put any of them into practice without supervision and appropriate safety precautions."

"Or at all," Crowley added, though with little conviction. 

From there, they launched into deliberations on the logistics of helping Clem figure out how and where to safely land, complicated by the fact neither of them had any idea how to land without legs. Speed felt of the essence. If Clem had figured it out, any of the other children might as well. 

When the children went to bed that night (and Rosa was safely ensconced in a book) they tried some of them out - Crowley tested the cushioning set-up they had settled on by flopping onto it several times at his best lunging speed, and they made adjustments until they were satisfied.

Anthony Junior and Datura were easily convinced to find themselves busy outside while Rosa and Angelica were at school, and they let Clem practice until he had the hang of landing on increasingly small surfaces. 

At their next practice session, Clem experimented with landing on his parents' outstretched arms, instead, using his remaining momentum to curl around the limb, constricting around it.

"Maybe we could find a good branch to set up as a landing spot for us outside?" He suggested, at which his parents once more exchanged looks of horror. 

They would have to come up with outside flying safety rules that were reasonable without being too constricting. 

"We'd prefer you not fly outside quite yet until we've figured out how to keep you from being seen," Aziraphale finally said. 

"Okay!"

"Looks like this weekend is time for you to show your siblings what you can do, and see if they want to learn!" Crowley announced. 

They, of course, did, squealing and hissing in excitement at the prospect. 

"Will you join us too, Father?" Rosa asked, stopping Crowley short. 

"Me?" He asked, quite stunned, sure he had misheard. 

"Well, Azirafather isn't as comfortable with being a snake yet," Rosa explained her reasoning.

Crowley considered it - while he had immediately been certain that if one of their children could learn the skill, all of them could, it hadn't even occurred to him that he might be able to as well.

 _Upon thy belly shalt thou go, and dust shalt thou eat all the days of thy life_ \- that's how the curse went, right?

His more fairytale-minded children, of course, would tell him curses were meant to be broken. 

"It's been a while since I learned something new," he admitted, then looked at Aziraphale, who was looking back with warmth.

"But I'll try," he declared, to cheers from the children.

**Author's Note:**

> Title from the same ([actually fake](https://fakebuddhaquotes.com/it-is-better-to-conquer-yourself-than-to-win-a-thousand-battles-then-the-victory-is-yours-it-cannot-be-taken-from-you-not-by-angels-or-by-demons-heaven-or-hell/)) Buddha quote OlwenDylluan drew from.  
> James' words are from Olwen's fic, as well.  
> Bible Quote from Genesis 3:14, English Revised Version.  
> Darling Noriann, also known as MilleVisages, pointed me to [this video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=16aGSx9gFO4) after I was already mostly done, which was a disturbingly close visual to what I pictured.


End file.
